Library Media Connection - Suzanne Libra
While not good reading material during mealtime, these books will have high interest appeal. If you want to know what goes on in your compost pile or sewer, these books will tell you in some detail. Each book in the series opens with a "What is a habitat?" two-page spread. Although the text is almost identical in each book, the illustrations are different. After the introductory spread, the books go into the specifics of each habitat, discussing the animals, insects, and microbes that exist in the different environments. Each two-page spread has illustrations, captions, text, and often sidebars. Each book also includes a hands-on activity, glossary, further reading list, and website links. Although these books are short, they pack in a lot of useful scientific information in a student-friendly format. My second grader browsed them, and my middle school students read them. This would be a good set to have in the room during a unit on habitats or adaptation. Recommended.–Suzanne Libra, Teacher Librarian, Silver Hills Middle School, Westminster, Colorado [Editor’s Note: Also available in paperback.]<i>Library Media Connection</i> May/June 2010
November 14, 2011NSTA Recommends - David Tumbarello
Heinemann-Raintree adds to its Read Me collection with a book series that investigates common, but often uncovered, close-to-home habitats. The Horrible Habitats series includes seven primary grade–level books that explore sewers and gutters, rotten logs and forest floors, streets and alleys, caves and crevices, marshes and pools, compost heaps, and garbage cans and landfills. Students of all ages will be intrigued and pleasantly disgusted by the 30 or more pages of text and illustrations about each habitat. In Garbage Cans and Landfills, students will enjoy reading about pigeons and the diseases they spread, flies and their vomit, and the reason roaches love glue. Each book contains topics that span one or two pages, with highlighted key words and plenty of descriptive and captioned color photography. Many sections contain "Fun Facts," which compliment the text with a vivid fact about the habitat dweller and may cause a roar in the classroom. With "Fun Facts," students will learn that giant leeches can be as long as your arm, female seagulls vomit food into the beaks of their baby chicks, and scorpions have little claws that come out of their mouths to pull at their prey. The "Fun Facts" are sure to bring a chorus of "ooh’s and ahh’s" from young students. Each book ends with an activity related to the habitat, a glossary, a bibliography entitled "Find Out More" that can be used for enrichment, and a child-friendly index. The bibliography lists websites that can be used for enrichment. Teachers should use these books as ways to show students the difference between peer-reviewed scholarship and websites created for entertainment. With informative text, highlighted key words, vivid illustrations, Fun Facts, activities, glossaries, bibliographies, and indexes, this series provides the structure of informative text books students will encounter in upper grades and beyond. - David Tumbarello<i>NSTA Recommends</i>Posted on Web 10/5/2010
November 14, 2011
